2.4b Defining and Measuring Variables

Photo 2.6

A Stay-at-Home Mom and Her Child

Researchers look to measure social phenomena such as parenthood and work hours or education and income to identify and understand the possible relationships between them. These social phenomena of interest are called variables. A researcher’s statement of the relationship they expect to discover between two or more variables is a hypothesis. For example, this could have been a hypothesis in Calarco’s or Collins’s study: “Employed mothers of children age five or younger will be more likely to reduce their work hours than fathers of children of the same age.” This hypothesis includes variables like work hours, parenting, age of children, and gender of parent.

Conceptualize Variables

Researchers must be clear about what their variables mean. For example, “age of children” refers to children five or younger. Conceptualization is the process whereby the researcher explains what their variables mean so that research participants, the researcher, and readers of the research can have a shared understanding of them. They conceptualize variables so that their research can be replicated and built upon by other scholars.  

Operationalize Variables

The researcher must also operationalize the variables, which means choosing measurement criteria. In Collins et al.’s (2020) study, the research team could not ask participants whether they telecommuted because they used secondary data. Howeverow, they did know the occupations of their participants. Therefore, they included a measure of whether an occupation’s work could be done remotely. They used research by other scholars who had already classified occupations in this way to determine if the occupation could be done remotely.